George
by ForeverLovingToRead
Summary: George didn't die because of the bus crash. Instead, he slipped into a coma. After five years, no one thought he would wake up, but he did and the world is a lot different than what we would think. In fact, the Grey's Anatomy that we know, was in fact just a figment of George's subconscious.


His eyelids were heavy as he rapidly tried to blink, adjusting to all the light in the room. He felt strange. Both energized after what felt like a good night's sleep but also tired from taking a nap for too long. He tried to prop himself up using his arms and immediately felt weak, unable to support his own body weight he fell back down on the bed. Surrounding him was the familiar sound of a heart monitor, he was in the hospital.

He didn't know how long he had been asleep, the clock read 2:52, in the afternoon based on the light pouring in through the window. But once he had found the time he realized he had nothing to compare it to, he couldn't remember when he had fell asleep. And even more so, he had no idea how he had ended up in a hospital bed with an IV in his arm, obviously he had to have been admitted otherwise he would have woken up in an on call room.

He replayed the last events he remembered. Derek is dead, Meredith ran away and had another kid before coming back. Alex had Jo now. Lexie and Mark are dead. Izzie left. A thousand other event had happened and were replaying in his head but the one thing he couldn't remember was why he was in this bed.

Deciding the best course of action was to ask for help he hit the nurse call button on the panel connected to the bed's railing.

No one came within 20 minutes so he pushed it again and waited before pushing it repeatedly until a nurse finally ran into the room. She had just entered the doorway looking flustered and angry when she recoiled at the sight of him sitting up and awake. She had figured he had a visitor, there had been no indication that he had woken up. In fact, no one ever thought he would wake up after so long. But George O'Malley had woken up from his coma.

* * *

The nurse who had come running in froze on the spot, she had just been reassigned to the coma ward and didn't know how to handle a patient waking up. From what she had heard, most of the time doctors were able to gain some kind of indication of when a patient was coming out of it and were able to contact loved one to be there when they woke. But this patient had been weird. Rumor was that he used to work in the hospital and that since the beginning he had an unusually active brain that lead doctors to believe he was going to wake up any minute. But it had been five years so they had given up hope. The number of visitors he got on a consistent basis dwindle.

"Hello, my name is Alyssa. I'm going to call your doctor. Is there anything I can get you while you wait?" She didn't know what else to say. It wasn't her place to tell her how long he had been out.

"I need, I need Meredith Grey." George stated. If his memory was right it was only her and Karev left. "And Alex. Alex Karev."

"Ok. I will see if they are here. If you need anything else please just page me. Ok?" Alyssa waited for the patient to nod his head before turning to page the two doctors.

* * *

Meredith angrily ripped off the mask covering her face and threw it in the trash with more force than necessary. Her patient should have lived, a simple bumper to bumper car crash should have never cause enough internal bleeding for the woman to have actually died. Regardless, Meredith hadn't been having the best of days. Ellis hadn't slept much last night and Derek had to come in early for surgery this morning leaving her to get their three kids ready for their day. Zola had thrown a fit at the thought of going to kindergarten while her siblings got to play at daycare and Bailey made a mess at breakfast making everyone run late.

Ready to grab a much need lunch, Meredith headed to the attending's lounge to grab her wallet when she got a page from the coma ward, thinking it must be a mistake since it wasn't marked 911 she continued with her original plan. Just as she was leaving the lounge, credit card in hand, Alex jogged up next to her.

"Hey, are you headed up to the coma ward?" He asked as he pressed the button to call the elevator.

"No, I figured I was paged on accident." Strange that he knew about the page. "Did you get paged too?"

"Yeah, I called up there because I knew we didn't have any kids up there so I couldn't figure out why they wanted me" At this point the elevator had reached them, Alex hit the button for two floors down, Meredith hitting the lobby floor. "They said a patient was awake and asking for the two of us."

Meredith let out a groan, of course a patient would want to see her, this would mean that she was going to have to delay her lunch by who knows how long. "I guess we should head over. Might as well drop by to visit George since we will be there." She felt bad about her increasingly infrequent visits to see her friend. But there came a point when the chances of him waking up were close to zero and with three kids, she didn't really have time to go see him all that often.

"Yeah," Alex agreed, "I haven't visited since you were in DC for the length of your pregnancy. I think I did stop by just to mention you had the kid and we're back." When George had gotten into the accident he had a constant flow of visitors, but as the years had passed, life happened. People moved away and everyone got busy. But Alex still liked stopping by to talk to the man, keep him updated on life.

The elevator doors opened, both doctors exited leaving the machine to head down to the lobby empty, lunch having to wait. The two stopped at the desk to find out why they had been paged. Nurse Alyssa saw them both and made her way over.

"Hello, I don't know if we have been introduced properly. I'm Alyssa, you must be Dr. Grey and Dr. Karev." She outstretched her hand waiting for one of them to shake, eventually dropping her hand when she realized neither doctor looked happy to be here and weren't in the mood for introductions. "Sorry," she added awkwardly. "I'm new to this ward and I haven't yet had a patient wake up who wasn't being awoken from a medically induced coma surrounded by doctors and his chart is so outdated that I didn't know who to call. But he asked for you guys, so I figured if anything you could help out. Patient in 305, Mr. O'Malley, he's awake." She watched as her superiors took in the information, first confusions as they tried to remember the patient in question and then disbelief as they realized who she was talking about. Without saying anything to Alyssa, Meredith and Alex exchanged a quick glance before breaking into a run in the direction of the room they knew their friend to have been inhabiting.

Alex made it to the room first and could only stare at his friend, the man wasn't even aware that Alex had entered the room, instead he was too busy watching TV. Meredith was there a second later and didn't hesitate to launch herself at the man laying down. She felt in jump up, obviously a little startled. Meredith didn't even try to stop the tears falling. It was a miracle that after five years he was awake. Alex moved so that he was sitting on the edge of George's bed. He looked up to notice that the nurse was standing in the doorway.

"Please padge Dr. Derek Shepherd, not his sister, Dr. Bailey, Dr. Webber, and Hunt" Alex asked. The nurse just nodded before leaving.

Upon hearing the list Alex had given the nurse, George turned his attention away from Meredith to look at the man. "Dr. Sheppard, I thought he was dead." Meredith sat up straight, exchanging confused glances with Alex.

"George," Meredith started, but then paused, unsure of how to start again.

"Look man," Alex took over where his friend stopped. "You were in an accident, ok? You were hit by a bus when you pulled a woman out of the way. Do you remember any of that?" He stated in an attempt to gauge how much George remembered.

"Yeah," George nodded, "And the girl I saved she survived right?" Both doctors nodded. "So?"

"George, you've been in a coma" Meredith spoke softly, grabbing her friend's hand to offer some form of comfort. "You've been out for almost five years."

"No, that's not possible. I've been there for everything. Izzie got better but then she was fired from the hospital so she disappeared and she and Alex got divorced. There was a shooting in the hospital, Meredith you had a miscarriage and Derek almosted died. There was a plane crash! Arizona lost her leg, Derek almost lost his hand. Mark and Lexie are dead, Mark left behind his daughter. You guys bought the hospital with the settlement money. You named the hospital after Lexie and Mark, right?" George was confused, how could he have been asleep if he remembered everything that had happened. "Callie and Arizona got married and then Arizona cheated on her. Webber almost died during a superstorm on the same day that your second kid was born Meredith. You adopted Zola. You - You . . . I remember everything. Cristina left the country after Owen cheated on her. And . . . And Derek _died_ Meredith. He got asked to cure Alzheimer from the President and on his way to the airport he died leaving you to have a kid on your own, you disappeared to have the baby girl. You have another half sister, she's black and is also Webber's kid. Derek's sister works here now, obviously that's true if Alex made a point to tell that nurse to call the right Sheppard." George was getting increasingly frustrated, how could they say he had been in a coma for _five_ years. That was insane. "And stop looking at each other like that," he added as he caught Meredith and Alex exchanging another worried glance.

"George, I can assure that my husband is alive. And some of the things you said did happen, but not all of it and not how you said it did. But let's wait for Derek, okay? If anyone knows how the brain works, it's him." Meredith said soothingly, running her hand up and down his arm.

They passed the time chatting, Meredith and Alex tried to avoid as much detail as possible. Deciding that Meredith's kids was the best subject since he obviously knew about Zola, Bailey, and Ellis.

"As I live and breath, George O'Malley, you are awake" Bailey stood in the doorway with a big smile on her face. "And as if this wasn't a familiar scene, you'all thinking you can avoid work and choose to sit and gossip. Now move over Grey, I need to give this boy a hug" She hurried over to his bed side and wrapped her short arms around her former intern.

After Bailey, the rest that had been paged flooded in quickly. Webber entered the hospital room, then Hunt, finally followed up by Derek Sheppard. That's when it hit George, when he realized that Meredith and Alex had been right when they told him things weren't as he believed them to be and if he was wrong about Derek, what other details of the truth did he make up in his brain.

Upon seeing the head-doctor, everyone else took a step back from the bed. Derek pulled out a small flashlight, checking George's pupil response first. "Well, I would like to get a CT pretty soon. In all honesty O'Malley, I have no idea why you are awake. When you were hit by the bus, you sustained severe damage. Callie had to reset your left leg and shoulder. Webber and Bailey had some major internal bleeding they had to fix and your brain swelled. When you were first admitted you stayed conscious for about two days. Just long enough to get Meredith to recognize you before you entered your coma. After that we fixed everything not already done, and Mark went and helped to fix your face. You look exactly as you did five years ago, although you might have a few new gray hairs." Derek smiled, hoping for his joke to ease the tension, it seemed to help everyone except George who just looked more lost. "Anyway, when you feel into your coma, your brain activity was unusually high. We thought you could wake up any moment, but even after you got all fixed up, you didn't wake up. Eventually, we decided there was nothing we could do except to wait. Now, I know that this is a lot to take in, but do you have any questions?"

Everyone held their breath, waiting for the man to speak.

"Forgive me, it's been a while since I did a neuro round, why do I feel like I've been awake for everything. The more that I think about it, I realize that I don't have any memories of my own, I can't tell you when I go to bed every night, but I have such vivid memories of . . . of everything. Of how upset Alex was when Izzie left. Of how frightened Cristina was after the shooting. When Meredith had Bailey, I feel like I was standing right there. I can recall Avery and April, people that according to you, I have never met. Hell, I remember you dying, so how is it possible that I can remember all of that and yet I've been confined to this bed for years and you are still alive?"

"Like I said, your brain had an unusual amount of activity, so it's basically like you've been dreaming. Now, there seems to be some accuracy to what you think is the truth. There have been many studies to say that depending on the level of brain activity, you can hear when people are talking to you. My best guess is that whenever someone came to visit you, they told you, like most people would, about their day." Derek looked around to his friends in the room for confirmation, each person nodding their head in agreement.

"That makes a lot of sense actually," Alex chimed in, "He was able to create a fairly accurate history and his brain just filled in where your stories left off right?"

"That right Karev." Derek smiled.

George nodded his head along with the conversation to show his understanding. "So," He began slowly, "How am I supposed to know what's real?"

"We'll tell you." Meredith stated.

And that's how they ended up ordering lunch from the cafeteria and pulling up chairs to surround George before telling him the real story.

"Well, I guess we should start from the beginning. The same day that you slipped into the coma Izzie almost died, we were able to revive her and she went on to beat cancer but by that time she was tired of the hospital. She did leave, but on better terms. We did get divorced but she still comes back for the important things. Weddings and the births of children, ya know?" Alex decided to start, especially since the most recent thing concerned his ex-wife. "She need her space but we will give her a call and I'm sure she will be here by tomorrow."

"I'm the one who told you about the merger, I think." Meredith took over the story. "With cuts and everything, only two of the acquisitions from our year are left. We didn't get along for awhile but Jackson and April are family now. You said something about the gunman. Unfortunately, that did in fact happen. We lost a couple of nurses, two security guards and two of the surgeons we go during the merger. Derek almost died and we all suffered some type of PTSD because of it. I think Cristina liked talking to you for a while afterwards."

They all stopped talking for a moment, they knew what was next but no one really wanted to be the one to talk about it. Webber decided that it should be him, if only because he wasn't one of the people on the plane. "The plane crash devastated this hospital, but Mark and Lexie didn't die. The pilot was the only one because he crashed head on. Meredith, Lexie, Cristina, Derek, Mark, and Callie were stuck in the forest for three days before they were located. The crash took it's toll on everyone. Callie and Arizona were never the same, it's actually probably what can be blamed for their eventual break up. Mark and Lexie decided that they needed to be together, but Lexie had been a target in the shooting and had lost her mom here, Seattle Grace held too many bad memories. So the two of them decided to transfer hospitals, but they are still close enough that Mark sees his daughter Sofia all the time and I might be mistaken," he looked up to Meredith and Derek for confirmation, "They make it to every Sunday family dinner as long as their surgeries permit." George noticed that both Derek and Meredith nodded. "My guess is you thought they died because they stopped coming by or someone might have made a comment like 'Mark and Lexie are gone' and you thought that meant they had died."

"Thanks to Karev's project to help African children who needed surgeries, we found our baby girl, Zola." Derek's face lit up talking about his children. "Not long after that, Meredith got pregnant with our second child, a little boy we named Bailey. In true Seattle Grace fashion, we did it during a blackout and she also needed an emergency splenectomy during her C-Section. I got a job offer from the President of the United States to cure Alzheimers. It caused some tension between my wife and I, but we decided I would only work for the length of her pregnancy. Basically, I would work long enough to set everyone up with the proper line of research. That way Meredith could take it easy so we didn't have the same problems with this pregnancy. Now I spend a couple days in DC every month or so. But our lives are very much still here."

"You were right about Meredith's sister too. She has another sister who is half Webber's." Alex added, remembering George's comment from earlier. "I think that's all the big things-"

"Except, you were right about Cristina. She was done with the pain and the constant problems that come along with working here. She had to get away. She actually took over Berk's research hospital in Switzerland. We will call her at a time that she will actually be awake over there. Maybe this will even give her a reason to come back and visit. She hasn't seen Ellis yet."

The group stayed talking for a little bit longer before bit by bit they were called away to handle their patients. Each gave George a hug on the way out promising to come see him soon. Derek ordered a head CT to make sure nothing else was wrong. While George sat alone in his hospital room he felt so conflicted. How could the world he know, not even exist? But honestly, this reality was so much better. Because all of his friends were alive and happy.

George began to feel tired, he hadn't been awake this long in five years. As he felt himself drifting into sleep, he was happy to know that he would be able to wake up and be back to this life.

* * *

 **This is how I believe the show should end. I was never happy with losing Lexie and Mark so I like the idea that they are still alive in this world. Not to mention the fact that this story line gives the chance to bring back basically all of the really big characters at least for a couple of seconds on TV. I figured this being George's story made the most sense considering the fact that he was the first major loss, meaning all of the bad things that really happened to the characters can officially be a day-dream so to speak.**

 **Please read and review, I'm really curious to see what people think of this idea.**

 **Thanks.**


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